“And if I don’t want to let you in?”
“Then—” Angelo nudged closer and she fell back “—you might find that you don’t have a choice.”
“How has life been treating you?” He walked past her, his keen, green eyes searching for signs of occupation. By a man. By a man whose face was all too familiar to him.
“Fine!” Rosie stuck her chin up in mutinous response. He had headed towards the kitchen, but before she could catch up with him he was back out and making for the sitting room. From the way he glanced up the stairs, she wondered if he intended to do a full circuit of the cottage.
“I’ll bet,” Angelo snarled. There were no tell-tale signs of permanent occupation by someone else in the cottage, but then who knew? The bathroom upstairs might be a positive hotbed of men’s razors, boxer shorts and after shave!
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I should have guessed he was still around. And you had the nerve to try and wheedle personal details out of me! You’re a piece of work!”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, and if you’ve come here to insult me then you can leave. Right away!” She wondered how she would follow that ringing command through. He was bigger, stronger and, judging from the look of it, in no hurry to go anywhere. In all the time she had known him, this barely contained savagery had never been apparent. Not for a second did she imagine that it would translate into anything physical, but she feared what he might say to her. She couldn’t bear it if he began repeating how much he didn’t care and had never cared about her.
Angelo laughed mirthlessly. Every time he thought about that man nonchalantly driving away from the cottage, he saw red. It was almost more than he could do just to keep up a conversation of sorts when he wanted to smash things.
“Guess what?” He walked across to the bay window and perched on the edge of it because he couldn’t imagine being able to sit still.
“What?” Rosie hovered by the door, uncertain of what was expected of her.
“I saw him. So why don’t we quit playing games? You can stop pretending that you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about and I might finally learn the truth straight from the horse’s mouth. Or should I say straight from the mouth of the scheming, lying opportunist you never stopped being?”
Rosie tentatively walked towards the sofa and sat down, drawing her legs up to her chin.
Angelo didn’t take his eyes off her. God, but she was giving an Oscar-winning performance as the confused girl without an ounce of guile in her entire body. Her eyes were huge as she stared up at him. Gold-diggers usually came in sexy clothes; a few buttons undone; lashes longer than was natural; lips red and always slightly parted. She bucked the trend. Even when he had first met her in that cocktail bar, she had failed to do the part of “sexy babe” justice. Was that why he had been taken in three years ago? She was wearing her gardening garb of faded dungarees and a striped T-shirt underneath. Her feet were stuck into a pair of thick socks but she wasn’t wearing any shoes.
“I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about, Angelo.”
“Blond hair in a pony tail? Looks like a tree-hugging loser through and through? Ring any bells?”
“Are you talking about Jack?”
Angelo was enraged that she managed to maintain that steady, puzzled look even as she confessed the continuing presence of the man in her life.
“Are you going to tell me that he wasn’t here? That he didn’t spend the weekend in your house?” He could hear the ugly, unacceptable jealousy in his voice but he didn’t care.
“Yes, he spent the weekend. What of it?”
“You disgust me.”
“I disgust you?”
“Has he been on the scene all the time? I might have known that you would never have given him up!”
Rosie, about to lay into him—because how dared he start questioning how she lived her life?—was stunned into confused silence.
“Given him up?” she asked, bewildered.
“Spare me the butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth routine!” Angelo propelled himself away from the bay window, clenched his fists and unclenched them. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. You were seeing that man behind my back three years ago and you’ve continued seeing him behind my back this time round. What game did the pair of you have up your sleeve?”
“Seeing Jack? Yes, I’ve been seeing Jack. Why wouldn’t I be? I’ve known him since...since for ever.”
“You mean you aren’t even going to deny your own infidelities?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me.” He sat down on the chair and forced himself to keep perfectly still. It was the only way he could think of to impose some kind of self-control over emotions that were all over the place.
“You think I’ve been sleeping with Jack?” Rosie started laughing. She couldn’t stop. She knew that there was a dangerously hysterical edge to her laughter but she just couldn’t keep it in.
It was Angelo’s turn to be confused. He wondered if this was a ploy. He refused to believe that he could have been wrong. No, he wasn’t going to give that house-room.
“I know you have.”
Abruptly, Rosie stopped laughing. “And you know that how? Because I’m just the sort of tramp who would string two men along at the same time? And was I sleeping with Jack while that creep was stalking me? And what on earth would possess you to think that Jack and I could ever have a relationship like that?”
“I have proof!”
“That’s impossible.” Rosie had the weird feeling that she had stepped into a parallel universe, one in which nothing made sense any longer.
“Pictures, Rosie. Of you. And him. Arms wrapped round one another. Laughing up at him. Him looking down at you.”
Rosie heard the raw jealousy in his voice and she could see that every word he uttered was dragged out of him, as though he could no longer help himself. For the first time, she was looking at an Angelo who was vulnerable. Something inside her stirred and she wanted nothing more than to hold him tightly against her until that dark, devastated expression was wiped off his face.
“Where did you get those pictures from?” she asked steadily.
Angelo raked his fingers through his hair. His hands felt unsteady. “Your trusty friend showed them to me. There’s no honour amongst thieves.”
“Oh, Mandy,” Rosie murmured.
She looked at Angelo; he glared at her and immediately said, “Don’t even begin to think that you can talk your way out of this one by telling me that whatever I saw was a bunch of lies...”
“Of course Jack and I were hugging one another, and I’ll bet you a million pounds I know when those pictures were taken as well.” She risked standing up so that she could walk over to the comfy chair on which he was perched in tense, watchful silence.
Angelo’s jaw hardened as she pulled over a small stool to sit right alongside him. He felt like an invalid being visited by the doctor about to break bad news. He wished to God that he had never set foot inside this cottage, yet there was an inevitability to what was unfolding between them. He had laid down ground rules, had told her that the past was off-limits, but holding it at arm’s length didn’t mean that it ceased to exist. He hated this feeling of helplessness in the face of uncontrollable events.
“It’s a long story,” Rosie began. “And let’s just say that Amanda took the truth and twisted it to suit her own ends.”
“I’m listening,” Angelo heard himself say roughly.
“The stuff I pawned...the jewellery.” She took a deep breath and maintained eye contact. “I did it for Jack.”
“So out comes the truth. At last.” He felt as though he could do with a stiff drink, maybe more than just one. Like last time—three years ago, when he had looked at
those pawn tickets and those pictures and felt like the world was closing down around him. How many more times could he be taken for a sucker?
“I wanted to tell you but I was ashamed.” Rosie sighed. “You see, when the three of us decided to leave for London, well, it was a pretty bad time in Jack’s life.”
Angelo realised that he was thoroughly sick of hearing the man’s name. He also knew that he was committed to hear the rest of what she had to say whether he liked it or not. He was finally working out what torture felt like.
“We should have left months before we did, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to finish my exams. I told them I would follow but, no, we all had to go at the same time. So they waited for me and, while they waited Jack was beaten up. He almost lost his life.”
“I’m not following you.”
Rosie looked at him with clear eyes. “Like I said, he’d been having a bad time, but I didn’t realise just how bad until they nearly put him in hospital.”
“They?” Angelo scoured her face for signs of deception but there was none. She was telling the truth, all of it.
“Gay-bashers, homophobics—call them what you want—they put him in hospital. And when he came out, and we finally made it down to London, he became drug-dependent. It was his way of coping. I...” She took a deep, steadying breath. “I blamed myself. If we’d left when we’d planned to, none of that would have happened, but I was selfish.”
Angelo was lost for words. “Jack’s gay?”
“I’m betting Mandy never breathed a word about that. When he finally made it out of rehab, there was a great picture-taking session. I’d bet my life that those are the pictures she showed you. Of course I had my arms around him. Of course I was laughing. I was happy.”
“So the jewellery you pawned...”
“To help cover the cost of the best rehab place I could find. It was expensive, but he deserved it—and I know you probably think it was wrong but I don’t regret a penny of it.”
“Amanda.”
“I’m sorry I lied to you.”
“You could have said something.”
“I was ashamed. I thought you’d hate me for what I’d done. It was my fault that Jack went through what he did. We broke up—well, you dumped me—and by the time I thought that I had nothing to lose by getting back in touch with you, telling you the truth, I found out that you had married Mandy.” There, it was out.
“And you thought I’d been seeing her behind your back.”
“She told me that you had. I just found it really hard to believe, but you dumped me. And then you went and married her, and I knew that she’d been telling the truth, and then it stopped mattering whether you knew about why I pawned the jewellery. I told myself that I was moving on. Jack was all better, had found himself a really lovely guy...”
Angelo met her eyes. Remnants of his pride rose to the surface but he knew that if he didn’t tell her the truth now he would forever lose the opportunity. He reached out hesitantly to stroke her cheek and was encouraged when she didn’t immediately pull back.
“I hadn’t been seeing her behind your back,” he said heavily. “She was just someone who shared your house. I barely even registered her. I only had eyes for you.”
Rosie’s breath caught in her throat and the hope she had been trying to squash, that treacherous seed of hope that had sprung into life the second she had recognised his burning jealousy, began spreading like wildfire.
“But she was having your baby.”
“The night she told me about you...the man; the jewellery you’d pawned...I went out and got blind drunk because I couldn’t cope.” He’d thrown caution to the winds. He had laid himself bare for her to do with him as she wanted and he had experienced a weird sort of liberation. His mouth twisted. “I woke up the next morning and I was still out of it. I didn’t remember her in my room, or anything else that followed.”
“And she got pregnant.”
“I’ll never know if that was pure bad luck or whether she timed things just right. At any rate, I told her to get lost when she showed up for more of the same, but then she showed up with the news that I was going to be a father and the rest was history. I’d lost the only woman I’d ever loved and I was saddled with the one who put me in that place.”
“You loved me?”
“I didn’t realise how much until you were no longer around. You haunted me. I hated you for what I thought you’d done but I couldn’t get you out of my mind. Amanda and I never shared a bed again. We barely shared the same space. I made sure she had more than sufficient money to do whatever she wanted, but as far as any kind of relationship went there had never been one.” He pulled her gently up and Rosie sat on his lap and curved her body into his.
“You loved me,” she murmured, and she felt him smile against her. “And what about now?”
“Isn’t it time you committed to this conversation?” Angelo said gruffly. Even with her pressed against him he still wasn’t sure that she didn’t now dislike him for having made it clear that he was using her for sex.
“I love you,” he inserted, already aiming to win her over if only through repetition. “I love you and I need you and I can’t imagine living without you. The past week has been hell. I drove down here and I told myself that it was because I needed to personally work out where those boundary lines were going to be, but I knew that I was chancing on seeing you again. Even if all I did was argue with you. You’re like a drug...”
“I like being a drug.” She tilted her face up and closed her eyes as his mouth found hers and he began kissing her, a long, deep, tender kiss that left her feeling as weak as a kitten. “And, as for committing to this conversation, I’ve always loved you. I never stopped. I could never, ever have slept with you again if I didn’t love you, although I kidded myself that I was just doing what you were doing—just dealing with unfinished business.”
“I didn’t divorce Amanda because I never wanted to forget my learning curve,” Angelo mused. He slipped his hand under the strap of her dungarees and tugged it gently over her shoulder. “I figured I would never make the mistake of getting married again, so what was the point in getting a divorce? I was wrong. I want to get married again and this time to the only woman in the world I have ever wanted to marry. And I know I should get down on one knee and propose to you, but it’s so damned comfortable having you on my lap. So, Rosie, will you be my wife?”
Rosie took a few seconds to savour the sound of that. It was something she had never, ever thought she would hear.
“I can’t think of anything I’d rather be.” She hooked her arm around his neck and placed a kiss on the curve of his jawbone. “You came into my life and I fell in love with you, and you’re the only person I could ever imagine sharing the rest of my life with. Even when you kept telling me that it was only about the sex I still kept fantasising that one day you’d see things differently. I knew it was weak, but I just couldn’t imagine you not being in my life. It was like I’d spent three years trying to forget you ever existed, and then the second I saw you again I had to live with the fact that, without you in my life, I didn’t exist.”
“And will you have my babies?” His seeking hand found the warm curve of flesh underneath her T-shirt and he smoothed his hand along her side, enjoying the way she wriggled into just the right position so that he could slip his hand under her stretchy bra and massage her breast.
“I can’t think of anything I’d want more. I love you so much, Angelo. It’s been a long, rough journey but I never, ever want to let you go...”
* * * * *
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CHAPTER ONE
DEMYAN SLID THE black-rimmed nonprescription glasses on before pushing open the door to the lab building. The glasses had been his uncle’s idea, along with the gray Armani cardigan Demyan wore over his untucked dress shirt—no tie. The jeans he wore to complete the “geeky corporate guy” attire were his own idea and surprisingly comfortable.
He’d never owned a pair. He’d had the need to set the right example for his younger cousin, Crown Prince to Volyarus, drummed into Demyan from his earliest memory.
He’d done his best, but they were two very different men.
Maksim was a corporate shark, but he was also an adept politician. Demyan left politics to the diplomats.
For now, though, he would tone down his fierce personality with clothes and a demeanor that would not send his prey running.
He knocked perfunctorily on the door before entering the lab where Chanel Tanner worked. The room was empty but for the single woman working through her lunch hour as usual, according to his investigator’s report.
Sitting at a computer in the far corner, she typed in quick bursts between reading one of the many volumes spread open on the cluttered desktop.
“Hello.” He pitched his voice low, not wanting to startle her.
No need to worry on that score. She simply waved her hand toward him, not even bothering to turn around. “Leave it on the bench by the door.”
A Deal with Di Capua Page 17
